


You're (A)live

by zenonaa



Category: Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: F/M, Post Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-07-05 00:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15852810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenonaa/pseuds/zenonaa
Summary: “Hey, look!” Aoi says, nudging Makoto. “Your face is on that one!”He follows her finger. His face hasn’t been carved off and wrapped around a sign, but his image is on one. On several.Many with hearts around them.Kyouko folds her arms over her chest.“You seem to have some admirers,” says Byakuya, smirking.Yasuhiro grins and points into the crowd. “So do you, Togami-chi.”The Survivors do a Q&A with the general public.





	You're (A)live

The only person who thinks this is a good idea is Yasuhiro.

“We don’t even have to do anything other than smile and wave,” says Yasuhiro, with his arm slung across Makoto’s shoulders. Even the smallest movement brushes their legs together.

Despite no longer being students or captives with a limited wardrobe, the six of them are still wearing their old school uniforms. Touko pulls a face, sitting opposite them in the cramped space, and next to her, Byakuya rests his cheek in his hand and stares out of the window at the early morning sky that their plane soars through, seemingly lost in thought.

She took until the end of the first hour of being beside him to calm down. There are only six seats. Between Yasuhiro and Aoi is a slim aisle.

“This is ridiculous. We’re not high school students,” grumbles Touko with her fists clenched into tight balls on her lap.

Yasuhiro keeps his arm around Makoto but turns his head slightly toward Touko. “We have to wear them! The outfit is, like, one of the most recognisable aspects of our character design, ‘right?”

“Stop saying things like that. We’re not video game characters,” says Aoi, frowning across the aisle at them. Touko huffs. Aoi’s voice doesn’t lose volume as her target shifts. “Don’t worry, Fukawa-chan, once Futuristic Foundings marks our tests, we’ll all get brand new uniforms.”

“It’s Future Foundation,” says Touko through her teeth.

Byakuya wrinkles his nose. Out of all of them, his clothing - a suit - is the most professional, so he can’t complain about his attire. He doesn’t.

“It’ll be a miracle if you pass,” Byakuya instead informs Aoi, who pouts. Ignoring her, he pushes up his glasses, and though he turns away from the window, he doesn’t concentrate on anyone. Solemnity clouds his eyes and overcasts his features. “We mustn’t lower our guard, even for a moment. While there are people who will surely rejoice when they see us, there are those who could use this as an opportunity to attack the world’s symbol of hope.”

Silence hangs over them, bar a constant gentle hum. Makoto studies his hands, then lifts his gaze. Byakuya’s eyes have cleared and are fixed on him. Looking around, Makoto realises that everyone else has trained their eyes on him too, including Kyouko, seated between Aoi and a window, one leg crossed over the other. Until now, whenever his eyes had strayed to Kyouko, she had been focused on the world outside of the plane.

He scratches the nape of his neck and hunches his shoulders. “It’s not just me who’s the world’s hope. We all are. I mean, you all had to find hope within you when we faced off against Enoshima. I just helped bring it out of you guys...”

Most of them quirk their brows, mouths either pursed or slanted at one end.

“Naegi-kun’s right,” says Kyouko with a smile. Makoto gives her one back, and the flight continues.

The plane lands in a private airfield. They stretch out their arms and legs without having to worry about whacking someone in the face or kicking them in the shins, but the air outside is barely cooler than that in the aircraft. Yasuhiro’s back pops. However, the respite doesn’t last long, and guards that all look the same soon escort them to a small coach bus, which drives them to a domed building, and then the guards accompany them through several drab hallways.

In a large, open room, everyone passes through metal gates the shape and size of a normal door, and after they’re intensively screened and patted down, they’re given hooded cloaks and they finally embark another coach bus and head to the city square. Makoto doesn’t know what to expect as he stares out at the dreary industrial city. Accelerated decay and destruction have eaten chunks out of buildings, and the only cars they spot along the way are abandoned on cracked sidewalks or partially buried in debris and sludge-coloured moss. When he breathes in deeply enough, he inhales a musty odour.

Despite the lack of traffic, their coach bus crawls along for ten minutes until it parks down an alley. As soon as they step out, guards surround them from all sides and guide them forward. Outside stinks of soot, sweat and oil. Elbows and shoulders bump. They can hear humans chatter and shout beyond their bubble, but they can’t see anyone past the guards. All they can see is a red sky and the backs of guards dressed in business suits, wearing either sunglasses with ear guards or helmets with tinted visors, as well as concrete slabs underfoot.

Rough hands push Makoto and the others up a short flight of steps, and then they find themselves on a raised platform. A stage. The guards part like the Sun shining through the clouds like it hasn’t done in years, and the six survivors are confronted by an ocean of people, who erupt into applause and screams at the sight of them.

Aoi peels off her hood and the others follow suit, causing the screams to increase in volume.

“That’s a lot of people,” Aoi murmurs.

“With a lot of signs,” adds Yasuhiro as he mops his brow with a torn handkerchief.

Makoto surveys the crowd. Indeed there are. Signs are scattered across the crowd with different designs and messages.

“Hey, look!” Aoi says, nudging Makoto. “Your face is on that one!”

He follows her finger. His face hasn’t been carved off and wrapped around a sign, but his image is on one. On several.

Many with hearts around them.

Kyouko folds her arms over her chest.

“You seem to have some admirers,” says Byakuya, smirking.

Yasuhiro grins and points into the crowd. “So do you, Togami-chi.”

In fact, they all seem to. Byakuya, Makoto and Kyouko occupy the most signs, followed by Aoi, then Touko, and then Yasuhiro, even if one were to exclude the images of Touko with angry font and a black cross over her face. Those signs are at the heaviest density in one spot in the crowd, and though they only make up a small percentage, they catch the eye quickly. Touko shrinks back a bit. Yasuhiro squints.

“Those guys really don’t like Fukawa-chi,” he remarks with a small, ingenuine smile that curls down at the ends, trying to keep the mood light. It fools no one.

“I think it’s more that they don’t like her alter,” says Kyouko, looking over as well.

Guards stand in a line in front of the stage and behind Makoto and the others too. Regardless, Aoi narrows her eyes at the signs and slightly positions herself in front of Touko.

“It seems she has some fans anyway,” Byakuya tells them, peering at another group of people holding up signs with Touko’s face on them, lacking crosses and bearing words of solidarity.

His eyes travel across the excited, writhing crowd, and stop on a particular sign. It has a photograph of him and Makoto on it.

“What is a naegami?” asks Byakuya.

Yasuhiro cups Byakuya’s ear and whispers something to him. Byakuya stiffens, glances at Makoto and then shuffles away a bit. Makoto pretends not to notice, though he doesn’t really mind, understanding.

“He’s not my type,” says Byakuya nonchalantly, and Yasuhiro gives him a curious look.

“You have a type?” he asks, but he doesn’t receive an answer.

Romance, even the allusion to it, isn’t something that Makoto has ever seen Byakuya appreciate receiving, or appreciate in general. Indeed, Makoto has only witnessed him react negatively to it and the idea of it from anyone else, treating it like a weakness, something to be exploited, looked down upon, and especially being in a place like this, with an audience, Byakuya probably wants to distance himself from that sort of thing as much as he can. A thing that goes against how he was raised, in a cold, business environment, and so disgusts him.

Also, Byakuya has often talked about how he dislikes ‘commoners’. So that too.

“Silence, please,” a female voice booms from speakers attached to quad truss pillars on both ends of the stage. The audience continues babbling, but whoever is talking doesn’t wait for silence and speaks over them. “We won’t be accepting questions until there is silence. Then, you may click your remote, and we will give you the chance to ask any of the survivors a question of your choice.”

Makoto, Kyouko, Byakuya, Touko and Aoi all slowly turn toward Yasuhiro, who yelps and throws up his hands in surrender.

“I didn’t know there’d be questions!” says Yasuhiro as guards approach them with headsets.

“Now what?” asks Touko, holding her fist close to her mouth, on the verge of popping her thumb between her lips either to chew or scrape her teeth on it.

“... Maybe we should answer their questions,” says Kyouko. She puts her headset on. “It would let people get to know us better, and we can clear up any misconceptions people have. If we want their support, we should be open with them.”

They cast their eyes toward the crowd, and Makoto lingers on the signs with Touko’s face smeared with black paint. Byakuya clicks his tongue. With a nod, Makoto places his headset over his ears, and then the others, including Byakuya, slip theirs on as well.

Eventually, the crowd quietens, and then an alrighty growl thrums overhead. Makoto tenses. They tilt their heads back with a jerk. The noise comes from a drone that flies out from behind the stage and hovers above the audience. For a couple of seconds, it stays suspended in that exact spot before descending into the crowd. As it seems to close in on its target, Makoto can just make out a red dot flashing on a girl’s remote. Everyone in the audience has their own standardised remote. Each one has two buttons and a small diode that can emit light.

The drone floats in front of the girl’s head. Those who are nearby shuffle to give it more space.

“My question is for Naegi-san,” the girl says into her remote, which acts as a microphone too. Makoto wonders if the drone is recording them. She can’t be older than ten. “What was the scariest thing to happen to you during the killing thing?”

For a situation like this, that sort of question isn’t unusual, but none of them knew they would be asked anything, and even if Makoto had been prepared, he doubts he wouldn’t have flinched, or that his heart wouldn’t have skipped or his stomach wouldn’t have felt like it was coated in thick sludge. The girl’s expression remains unmoved. Fixated. Hundreds upon hundreds of eyes prick Makoto’s skin, including those of his former classmates.

And the eyes of his dead classmates.

Makoto breathes shallowly.

“The beginning was really scary,” Aoi pipes up, with an index finger raised.

“Y-Yeah. A lot of it was pretty scary,” he says slowly, his headset amplifying his voice. He winces. His head feels light. Unreal. “Seeing people die... that would scare most people.”

That young girl’s gaze probes him, pawing at the inside of his head. He gulps and with a deep breath, fortifies himself, and speaks through the ringing between his ears.

“For me, the scariest parts... were the first trial, because I didn’t know what to expect, and later when I thought I was about to be executed toward the end,” Makoto says. Silence. Bated breath from all. Makoto laughs a little due to nerves, and his voice cracks. “I didn’t know I would be saved, but the idea of spending the rest of our lives in there... that filled me with dread. But I got through it. That’s... That’s something, isn’t it?”

Right after the girl finished asking her question initially, the light on her remote had switched off. The drone whirrs off and arrives at another person, a young boy, whose remote had started flashing.

“What about the others?” he asks them. “What scared you the most?”

At least that gives Makoto a chance to compose himself. They rattle off their answers. Yasuhiro gives Junko as his answer and grimaces when Aoi reminds him of Alter Ego’s first appearance, then Aoi recalls that and the double murders. Kyouko says she’d rather not answer and Touko agrees quickly, while Byakuya claims that he never felt fear.

“Not even when Enoshima dropped that bomb on you about your family?” asks Yasuhiro.

“... Yes,” says Byakuya. Then, without missing a beat, and with his arms folded over his chest, Byakuya pats his hand against his upper arm and adds, “Next question. We have a lot of people to get through.”

A teenage girl is next.

“Do you ship tofu, Togami-san?” she asks.

One of the things that Future Foundation supposedly do is provide foods, so Byakuya says, “Yes, we do.”

The effects of his words ripple through the crowd, a tide that’s half-roar, half twitter. Makoto and the others exchange mystified looks. Indifferent to the clamour, the drone finds its next participant.

“So tofu is real?” asks another girl, wide-eyed and shaking slightly.

“Yes, obviously it is,” snaps Byakuya, to the same effect.

Noise surges through the crowd. There are a lot of beaming faces. Some are even crying. A few glower and sulk, here and there, but they’re drowned out by the majority, who hoot and hug and weep and wave their arms.

Byakuya blinks and though he tries to keep his expression blank, a bit of bewilderment seeps through, wrinkling his forehead.

“I guess people are really passionate about bean curd,” says Aoi with a bemused smile.

He pushes up his glasses and doesn’t comment. Once the crowd eventually quietens to a low rumble, the drone takes flight and searches for the next person.

It selects a middle-aged man with dull black hair.

“I have a question for Kirigiri,” he says, sort of raspily. “What did you and Naegi really get up to in the locker rooms?”

“Huh?” goes Makoto, puzzled. Kyouko stares at the man, eyes fully open but her mouth shut tight.

“When you guys were in the locker rooms,” explains the man, wringing his remote, and Makoto remembers that there were no cameras in the locker rooms at Hope’s Peak so nothing that transpired in there would have been broadcasted. The man lets out a wheeze. “We saw Togami and Fukawa get down and dirty in the dorm, but were you guys really just talking to the laptop in there?”

The other four turn to Touko and Byakuya. Touko shows a lot of teeth but she isn’t smiling as she peeks up at Byakuya, who stands very, very still.

This explained why Byakuya had been so shocked at finding out they were being broadcasted to the whole of Japan. Someone who knew that certain families controlled the world from the shadows wouldn’t have been surprised at a revelation like that.

“Togami?” says Aoi. She covers her mouth with one hand. “Fukawa-chan?”

“S-So what if we did?” hisses Touko. No one speaks. Touko sneers, sticking up her nose. “W-We both consented! We both could consent. We both... wanted it...!”

Her lips contort, dithering between smirking and biting her lips, but when she glances at Byakuya, her lips slump and she stares down at her feet meekly. For the first time, ever perhaps, Byakuya looks prepared to die.

“I...” Makoto turns back to the audience. His face is stiff and he thinks he’s wearing too many layers. He shakes his head. “No. No, we just talked to Alter Ego in there... That’s all. We’re just friends.”

It doesn’t ring quite right in his ears, but maybe that’s just because of the quality of his microphone, or because the reverberations here are all kind of distorted. No one is paying much attention to Makoto, anyway. Yasuhiro tears his eyes away from Byakuya and Touko.

“Hey, if you guys want juicy details like that, you’ll have to pay upfront after the show,” he tells the audience. “Who has another question?”

While all this had been going on, the drone had been waiting beside a woman who, on appearance, seems to be in her mid-twenties.

“Naegi-kun, do you forgive Maizono-san for her actions prior to her death?” she asks, as formal as her business suit.

Makoto hesitates, and takes a few moments to figure out his answer. Everyone watches him relentlessly. He tries to talk, but nothing comes out at first, and he swallows hard.

“Yes. I do,” he states.

“But she tried to frame you!” shouts a different woman, and the audience fizzes, threatening to explode like a shaken bottle of fizzy drink.

His heart beats fast. Makoto shows his palms.

“Maizono-san wasn’t thinking clearly, and she couldn’t have known that she’d have been sending us all to our deaths if she left,” says Makoto, but his words do little to soothe the crowd. Or do anything, really, apart from attract more questions aimed at him.

“So you think that if she had known, she wouldn’t have done the same thing?” asks a man wearing a jeans jacket. The drone hovers by him.

“I...” Makoto falters, remembering her wide eyes, her trembling hands and her tear stained cheeks. His stomach coils. He rakes his fingers through his hair. “I can’t say... what she’d have done... but Maizono-san was afraid, and her plan failed because her heart wasn’t fully into it. I’m sure she wasn’t thinking straight.”

More chattering.

“She means a lot to me, and in my heart... I know she wasn’t a bad person. I can’t hate her,” says Makoto as firmly as he can. His features harden.

“But - ”

“Next topic, please,” says Kyouko, interrupting the man, and the drone obediently heads over to someone.

“Do you miss your family, Togami?” asks a man in casual clothes. T-shirt and jeans.

Byakuya turns his head a fraction, cheeks slightly flushed from before.

“The Togami Conglomerate cannot be destroyed as long as I am standing. I am more than capable of returning it to its former glory,” says Byakuya calmly. He nudges up his glasses. “No. It will be superior.”

“Not that, I mean... like your mother and father. Your siblings,” explains the man. “Do you miss them?”

“I lost contact with my siblings a long time ago. They are strangers to me,” says Byakuya plainly, no longer looking at anyone. “As for my parents, I can’t reverse whatever happened. What’s done is done.”

“So you don’t know?” asks a girl, clutching her remote.

A chill scuttles down Makoto. Byakuya’s lips press together.

“Know what?” says Byakuya, eyeing her. The girl is unperturbed.

“Enoshima broadcasted your father’s death to the whole world,” explains the girl. “He was on his knees, begging your Impostor for mercy... At the time, we all thought it was you who killed your dad.”

She says it like she’s reciting a bit of history during a study session. Byakuya’s head jerks back. He gapes at her but hastily throws up an aggressive front.

“That didn’t happen,” he snaps, but the grumbles in the audience suggest otherwise.

No matter how much or how long he glares, no one cracks. His lips quiver before squeezing together, and trembling faintly, he brings his hand to his chin, somewhat holding it, somewhat covering his mouth, and he doesn’t look at anyone, seemingly examining the gradient in the stage flooring with a cold and unreadable face that Makoto thinks could crumble if Byakuya opened his mouth again.

Touko stamps her foot and leans toward the crowd, gritting her teeth. “How dare you upset Byakuya-sama! Have some respect, you preppy, untuned accordion!”

“I just said what happened!” the girl calls out, but her remote no longer functions as a microphone so her voice barely carries over.

“Uh... anyone else got a question?” asks Yasuhiro, forcing a grin.

They watch the drone flit over to the next person.

“What did Oogami mean to you, Asahina?” asks a teenage girl with chin length, turquoise dyed hair.

Makoto glances at Aoi. His heart twinges at the sight of her face. Aoi shifts a foot back, and averts her eyes before she hugs herself.

“Sakura-chan means a lot to me. She was my bestest friend. She comforted me, gives me strength... and I’m going to do the same that she did,” says Aoi, voice shaking, and she rubs the heel of her palm against her eyes. Then she lifts her head, glowing with determination, eyes bright. Tears twinkle in her eyes but they aren’t a sign of weakness. They show her strength. Resilience. “I’m going to become as strong as her. That way, she hasn’t really gone.”

The crowd outnumbers Aoi greatly, but the power of her words, her existence, wash through them all, and they stand in front of her, enthralled. Even those on the stage with Aoi are riveted. Aoi puts her hands onto her hips, teary face on proud display. Her smile carves into her cheeks, and she and her companions only faintly register the drone as it flies over the quiet audience to its next destination.

“How can Future Foundation let a disgusting monster walk free?” someone barks, shattering the atmosphere.

They whip their heads around. The drone arrived at the group holding signs with Touko’s face crossed out on them.

Touko tenses a second before everyone else on the stage does.

A woman with wiry grey hair grabs the drone to stop it from flying off and though she doesn’t need to, she raises her voice, spraying spit. “Why can that monster go home at the end of the day, but my son can’t? A mother shouldn’t have to outlive her son!”

The drone wiggles but she keeps her grip tight on it. Touko’s elbows draw into her side and she drags a foot back. She tries to answer but just breathes with a rasp, and her next attempt results in a weak whine.

“Leave Fukawa-chan alone!” Aoi throws an arm in front of Touko, forming a barrier. “She didn’t do those things!”

More shouting, throughout the crowd. Touko cowers more.

“Genocider isn’t going to kill anyone again,” says Makoto, brow furrowed. “She... Genocider... promised me.”

“That’s all you have? Her word? That won’t bring our brothers, our fathers and our children back!” the woman with wild grey hair shouts.

The members of her group bellow their agreement, bearing the teeth, contorting their faces.

“They’re the same person!” someone else in the group screeches, pointing at Touko. “DID doesn’t work like that. She got the sneeze thing from an anime, and she didn’t faint when she saw that Kuwata boy’s bloody corpse!”

“Hey, the lighting in there was poor, ‘right?” explains Yasuhiro, but the audience doesn’t seem to be listening.

It’s one, large, thrashing entity attacking itself, flaking shouts, boiling with hot emotion and snarls. Touko looks about to vomit. She slaps a hand over her mouth and her legs slowly start to give way as she sinks to the floor. Her eyes don’t blink - her face twitches, but she doesn’t blink.

“We need to get Fukawa-san out of here,” says Kyouko. “Togami-kun, Asahina-san, take her from here.”

Aoi gingerly wraps her arm around Touko, tucking a hand under her armpit, and helps Touko up. Normally, Touko would probably shake Aoi off or argue, but Touko sags against Aoi instead, whimpering. Byakuya frowns at Kyouko.

“Why me as well?” asks Byakuya.

“You will be able to calm her down, and Asahina-san can make sure you’re not too rough,” explains Kyouko. She smirks humorlessly and adds, “And Asahina-san can keep an eye on you two, in case of mischief.”

Byakuya nearly chokes. Only a glimpse of his face can be caught before he turns away sharply, quick to march off. Aoi leads Touko off the stage with Byakuya following close behind. Guards prevent anyone from invading the stage, no matter much certain audience members flail their arms and charge. The crowd shows no signs of calming and in the end, more Future Foundation guards trickle out from around the stage, and after their orders for peace are ignored, they remove the group protesting against Genocider from the area.

This prompts the audience to recede and slowly quieten in fear that they will suffer the same fate.

“We will proceed, but if something like that happens again, question time is over,” warns a woman’s voice through the speakers.

Silence reigns. Someone could sneeze, and everyone would hear. The drone selects its next person. Three of the survivors remain on the stage, and they can’t see their friends anymore. Hopefully, they’re fine. No. They are. Makoto is sure of it. His fists clench.

He doesn’t know how long they’ll be gone for but they don’t return for the next several questions.

“Why exactly was Hagakure held back three grades?”

“Can we see Kirigiri’s scars?”

“What sort of girl is Naegi-kun into?”

“Was Hagakure high the whole time?”

“It’s due to a series of misunderstandings. I plan to sell the movie rights, so that’s all I’m saying for now.”

“No.”

“Um... Someone... kind...? With a cute smile... and a good heart? Sorry, I haven’t been thinking about this sort of thing lately.”

“I wasn’t on drugs at any point,” says Yasuhiro with a pucker in the middle of the v-shape that his eyebrows create. He jabs the air furiously. “If any of you guys suggest that again, I’m suing.”

The drone descends to the next participant, to a girl who looks a bit younger than them.

“Naegi-kun, who do you prefer: Kirigiri or Togami?” she asks, jiggling the bangles on her wrists.

“What?” blurts Makoto. Kyouko stiffens. Yasuhiro’s eyebrows rise.

“I mean, Kirigiri’s always cold toward you, and she totally threw you under the bus toward the end,” explains the girl. The crowd mumbles.

Makoto’s smile is tight. He reaches behind himself and cups the back of his neck. “I wouldn’t describe Togami-kun as a warm guy. He can be quite cold too, at times.”

“Yeah, but that’s how he shows affection, right? Otherwise, he wouldn’t make you his errand boy.”

Maybe it’s for the best that Byakuya is absent. Yasuhiro positions his hands onto his hips.

“I think Togami-chi just knows that he can boss Naegi-chi around and not say weird things to him like Fukawa-chi does... I mean, the dude also made Naegi-chi open a door we thought was rigged with a bomb,” Yasuhiro points out.

The crowd mumbles louder. At the edge of his vision, Makoto can discern Kyouko studying him with a small frown. He fidgets with his collar.

“They’re both my friends,” says Makoto, letting go of his collar and lowering his hand. More firmly, he says, “I’m not going to choose between them. Also, Kirigiri-san can be cold sometimes, but I know that she has a good heart. Though she tries to mask some of her emotions sometimes, she’s definitely not emotionless. When she lets us see her true feelings... it’s... nice.”

Okay, he might have fumbled at the end there.

Kyouko touches over her heart while Yasuhiro holds in a snort that manifests as a gleam in his eyes. Makoto’s face grows hot and he tries to ignore them. He hears some grumbling from the crowd, but he stands by what he said. The light on the girl’s remote disappears and the drone takes flight. It soon swoops down and hovers in front of the next speaker.

“My question is for Naegi,” says a girl about Makoto’s age. “Who was the cutest?”

He flinches. Kyouko and Yasuhiro jerk their heads back.

“Cutest...?” Makoto repeats, not completely processing the question initially even though on the surface, it’s a simple question.

His brow creases and he scratches lightly at his cheek. The audience hushes, and the tension presses against Makoto, glues his jaw shut.

Not that he has an answer anyway.

“Who...?” he manages, at a loss for words.

“Maizono!” someone yells.

“Oogami!”

“Fujisaki-chan!”

“No, Togami! He thinks Togami’s the cutest, duh!”

People begin shouting different names, and though the girl says something, even with her remote projecting her voice, she can’t be heard over everyone else.

The drone zooms around to various people.

“Obviously, he finds Kirigiri-san the cutest!” crows a teenage boy, and the drone flies off in one direction.

“No way!” says a man with rimless glasses. “Kirigiri doesn’t feel that way about him! It’s one-sided.”

It goes in the other direction.

“Naegi’s the one that doesn’t reciprocate her feelings!” says someone else, a woman with a bob cut.

The bickering continues. Makoto haplessly looks one way and another, again and again. This would have continued for longer, most likely, had after a few more head tosses, his head not veered into someone’s palm. He starts to turn more, to see who has grabbed hold of his cheek, but colours blur as a pair of lips crash into his. His body seizes up. Surroundings bleed through, all violets and pale skin, and the texture of the gloves that cradle his cheek give the person away.

Kyouko. It’s Kyouko. Kissing him. Makoto. She sets a hand onto his hip and adjusts her angle. He’s frozen, even as her warmth leaks into him, even as his heart works itself into a frenzy.

For a few moments, the audience is transfixed in silence, or perhaps time has stopped completely. All he knows, all he can think about, is her.

Then, there’s cheering. Some people might be moaning or huffing, but those sounds are trodden on in the stampede of elation. Kyouko dips him, keeping her mouth on his, her heat entangled with his, their hearts connected, and the noise grows almost deafening.

Makoto slowly relaxes, and he stays as he is.

Finally, Kyouko straightens, holding Makoto, who goes limp in her arms.

That was really nice.

“Any more questions?” she asks.

Not a single one.

**Author's Note:**

> done for an ask meme on tumblr! the request was 'naegiri+ a kiss out of envy or jealousy' except I got carried away lol.


End file.
